Imaging devices are frequently used in many aspects of business, industry and academic endeavors. The term “imaging,” as used herein, should be interpreted broadly to include any process for producing a copy of a document onto paper, a computer screen, an electronic image, or the like. Examples of imaging devices include printers, facsimile devices, copiers, scanners, display monitors, multi-function peripherals (MFPs), imagesetters, platesetters, filing devices, web publishing devices, and so forth. Documents which are sent to a printing device for printing are sometimes referred to as print jobs.
Many imaging devices can generate scanned image data. For example, some imaging devices include scanners which can scan a document to provide scanned image data. It is also possible that an imaging device may be able to read scanned image data from a storage device, extracted from a facsimile transmission, or compose scanned image data from a variety of imaging operations. There may also be other ways in which an imaging device may be provided with or otherwise obtain scanned image data.
When a user desires to generate a multi-page document as scanned image data (e.g., TIFF) and transmit it to and/or from the imaging device, the total size of the scanned image data may exceed the storage capacity of the imaging device. If the total size will exceed the storage capacity of the imaging device, the user would need to break the document up into several smaller documents and perform the operations separately. Each smaller document would need to be small enough so that the storage capacity was not exceeded.
In operation, typically imaging devices also are able to send scanned in documents to a computer or computing device. Typically the imaging device doesn't start transmission of the scanned in document until the entire document has been scanned in or otherwise obtained.
Therefore, there is a desire for a more effective method of generating and transmitting to and/or from multi-page scanned image data. Particularly, methods which support the generation/transmission when the device lacks available memory for the entire scanned image data, but sufficient memory for any one page.